Same here – went from 58 t0 40 and lost all my TOPICS. The problem is that major changes invalidate existing articles and references using the Klout score. This trashed a 6-month effort to get our organization to use Klout as a measure of social media marketing effectiveness. Back to square one, but this time I’ll have to use PeerIndex or something else more stable.

Klout system is called PeopleRank, after Google’s famed PageRank. Like Google, Klout deals with a ton of data, and has to adjust its algorithms to help combat people who are gaming the system and take account of new services or platforms influencing the social media sphere. As the company put it in the comment thread:

Hey Ruxtbl, You can think of this change similar to how Google changes it’s PageRank to always ensure the highest level of accuracy. Their goal is to find the most valuable content for your search, and our goal is to accurately measure influence. If your goal is becoming more influential and not gaming the Score, you’ll do just fine.

Klout’s success had made its score an authoritative figure in social media marketing circles. But the sudden change in users scores has soured many on Klout as a stable metric for employment.

I can handle a score change but you should then also update the history statistics as anyone viewing my graphs see a massive plummet with no explanation why it’s gone down hill so fast. If I was searching for a job in Social Media right now I’d be concerned.